The views contained here may not represent the views of 24hGold, its affiliates or advertisers.

24hGold.com makes no representation, warranty or guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the information (including, editorials, news, prices, statistics, analyses) provided through its service. In no event shall 24hgold.com, its affiliates or advertisers be liable to any person for any decision made or action taken in reliance upon the information provided herein.

Any copying, reproduction and/or redistribution of any of the documents, data, content or materials contained on or within this website, without the express written consent of 24hGold.com, is strictly prohibited.

When Steve Spielberg’s movie "Lincoln" came out Time
magazine featured interviews with him and his historical advisor on the film,
Doris Kearns-Goodwin. Spielberg said the movie is based on part of Goodwin’s
book, Team of Rivals,
because he was so impressed with her scholarship and the great detail and
abundance of historical facts in the book. Goodwin herself wrote in Time
that she spent ten years researching and writing the book to assure audiences
that the movie was in fact very, very well researched. (This project was
commenced shortly after she was kicked off the Pulitzer Prize committee and
PBS for confessing to plagiarism related to an earlier book of hers).

Tim’s cover story included another article by another
historian, in order to further persuade Americans that the movie portrays The
True Story about the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution
that ended slavery. Another major theme of the movie, one which is accurate
but not developed nearly enough, is how much of a political conniver, liar
and manipulator Lincoln was, and how he ignored the law and the Constitution
in myriad ways. This was brought out in the movie so that the punditry could
then editorialize about how President Obama should be "more like
Lincoln" and ignore any and all constitutional constraints on
presidential powers. The punditry did indeed behave in exactly that way
before and after the November election.

A couple of years before the movie came out Goodwin was a pervasive
presence on various news programs proclaiming how brilliant and magnanimous
Lincoln was to have appointed several former political rivals to his cabinet
and praising Obama for doing the same (keeping Bush’s Defense Secretary, for
instance). In an LRC article entitled "Team of Liars" I pointed out
that numerous presidents had done exactly the same thing for generations
prior to the Lincoln presidency; the main theme of Goodwin’s Team of
Rivals is therefore trivial and false. Nevertheless, these instances are
examples of how dishonest "historians" like Doris Kearns-Goodwin
attempt to twist and manipulate history in service of the state.

Yours truly recognized the Spielberg movie as fraudulent from the
beginning. In another LRC article entitled "Spielberg’s Upside-Down
History" I pointed out that Harvard’s Pulitzer prize-winning historian
David Donald, the preeminent mainstream Lincoln historian of our time, wrote
in his biography of Lincoln (page 545) that Abe in fact had almost nothing
whatsoever to do with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, contrary to
the main story line of Spielberg’s movie. In fact, as Donald wrote, when
asked by genuine abolitionists in Congress if he would assist them in getting
the Amendment passed, Lincoln refused. (He did struggle mightily, however, to
try to get a first Thirteenth Amendment, known as the Corwin Amendment,
passed in 1861 that would have enshrined slavery explicitly in the U.S
Constitution).

To my surprise, a member of Congress recently noticed a glaring
falsehood in Spielberg’s "Lincoln" and called him out on it.
Congressman Joe Courtney of Connecticut was sitting in the movie theater when
he was informed by the film that Connecticut congressmen voted against the
Thirteenth Amendment. He smelled a rat, and contacted the Congressional
Research Service, which informed him that the "facts" portrayed in
the movie are false; the entire Connecticut delegation voted FOR the
Thirteenth Amendment.

Congressman Courtney wrote to Spielberg asking him to correct the
inaccuracy in the DVD version of the movie but was ignored. Spielberg was
painted into a corner: If he did what the congressman requested he would be
admitting that his film contained a heavy dose of propaganda, contrary to the
great effort that had been made to assure audiences of the movie’s historical
accuracy. If he ignored the Congressman he risked having him make a big deal
of the issue with further press releases. So Spielberg’s screenwriter, Tony
Kushner, eventually came out with a feeble defense of the falsehood by
writing in USA Today that the purpose of the now-admitted falsehood
was "to clarify to the audience the historical reality" of how the
Thirteenth Amendment was passed. There you have it in the words of a famous
left-wing Hollywood screenwriter (is there any other kind?) clarifying
historical "reality" for the public requires lying about historical
reality.

This is the kind of bait-and-switch game that is played by Hollywood
leftists with their statist propaganda films. They trot out
"distinguished presidential historians" like the disgraced,
confessed plagiarist Doris Kearns-Goodwin to assure audiences of the movie’s
historical accuracy, but then when they are caught red handed in a pack of
lies they plead "poetic license" and argue that "it’s only a
movie, after all, and not a portrayal of reality." No wonder some people
believe that the word "cinema" is a combination of "sin"
and "enema."

Thomas DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College, Maryland, and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author or co-author of ten books, on subjects such as antitrust, group-interest politics, and interventionism generally

Tom DiLorenzo has extreme animosity for President Abraham Lincoln. He'll nitpit a Lincoln statement or two and will say, incredibly, that the Civil War was not about slavery. And he'll criticize ad nauseum Lincoln's violation of habeas corpus while overlooking the larger picture of slavery.

Speaking of slavery, this new article by DiLorenzo reinforces a few observations:

1) I have never read, or seen, an article by DiLorenzo attacking against the slave south.

2) I have never read, or seen, an article by DiLorenzo criticizing Southern General Robert E. Lee -- a villian who fought and killed tens of thousands to keep slavery alive. Instead DiLorenzo regularly attacks Northern General Sherman who had the lowest casualty rate of any general in the war!!! Is it that General Sherman freed slaves as he marched to the Atlantic?

3) Another question: why does DiLorenze support any state's claim to secede from the Union for the sake of freedom when that state denies freedom to thousands of individuals!! A question that might be asked of Ron Paul as well.

More crap from JIm C. who refuses to read anything that proves Lincoln ordered his generals NOT to free slaves as they progreesed south. Lincoln is a true US president, willing to kill for the purpose of looting others.

Did I ask you? I was asking HIS opinion, not google's. There are hundreds of books/articles and more on Lincoln that show up...doh. It'd be a question I'd be glad to answer on a topic about which I'm an expert, were someone to ask me. From the lack of response, looks as though he's not going to respond anyway...happy?

DiLorenzo won't respond only becasue he hasn't read or doesn't care to read any books about Lincoln and his efforts to abolish slavery. All he cares about is that Lincoln prevented the Southern States from leaving the Union -- nevermine that they initiated violence against their neighbor states in an attempt to maintain the trafficing of human beings.

DiLorenzo is that sect of Libertarian, including Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell, that hold State Rights over individual rights and, like Lysander Spooner, believe the Constitution has no authority over them. They believe in secession by whim which will result logically into total anarchy and a clan like society not unlike the present 'nation' of Somalia.

As for books about Lincoln a good start would be TEAM OF RIVALS by Doris Goodwin documenting Lincoln's efforts to push through the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery once and for all in the entire nation.

DiLorenzo isn’t the only one that doesn’t read peoples comments here. If you bothered to read more comments you would quickly realize that most here are well versed in history and have come to the determination that your view of Lincoln, Lew Rockwell, and Ron Paul makes as much sense as the theory you spew about the US launching pre-emptive strikes against those nations that are bold enough to stand up against the covert wars the US has been waging against them for years. You totally ignore any comments that challenge your precious view of a rotten and corrupt past president, Lincoln. You ignore the ample evidence that he actually wanted to keep the status quo and maintain slavery. You never comment or provide evidence to the contrary when statements are made by others that he ordered his generals to not free any slaves as they moved south. Lincoln was brutal to the point of murder if needed to keep a strangle hold on the south. You consistently rely on nothing more than the incident where the south fired the first shot to justify Lincoln’s act of declaring war but totally ignore that this shot was fired in self defense. Aggression does not have to come in physical form but the response from the south had to be physical as Lincoln would not accept any diplomatic solution. The farce that Lincoln fought the war to end slavery can be disputed by grade school children yet you cling to it.

The longer you post here the more your comments pour out nothing but hatred. There is no historical, journalistic, philosophical, moral or any other kind of value in them. You’ve become the bully in grade school who turns to aggression because of his short comings in matters that require the use of his intellect but has nothing to draw from.